“Kelly Slater looks like he is…on.”
The eleven-time king of the world Kelly Slater, who’ll turn fifty-three and be a daddy of two the next time his birthday cake is wheeled out, has stunned surf fans after progressing through his sudden death heat at Margaret River this morning.
Kelly Slater, from Cocoa Beach Florida but whose primary residence is a super compound at Pipeline, utilised his superior surf IQ to relegate Brazilian hotshot Yago Dora to a last-place finish.
In a post-heat interview Kelly Slater, a supreme articulator, delivered a complex analysis of not just his heat but the previous heat.
“It looked like there was going to be a lot more opportunity than we ended up having in our heat. The first heat had quite a few sets. You saw Reef got off to a strong start with that eight, and then backed up with a few, and then at the end they had a three-way flurry,” said Slater.
“They all got waves, so it kind of switched the positions around a little bit. So I was kind of I was definitely expecting more fireworks in the heat but I wanted to start strong and I got position on those guys. Yago took kind of a small one to get the heat started and it didn’t pan out for him and then Cole kind of paddled wide and I got under him for that first wave and and I just sort of set the pace and then I got a I got a my backup wave with third priority which kind of made me feel good because then I could just sit there and be patient and wait.
“And, you know, I was, I did wait, but the couple waves I took with priority weren’t that good. Cole kind of backed it up with one in the middle there, in between mine, and there wasn’t much there for Yago to do anything with.
“You know, he almost stuck that one air, which probably would have, you know, maybe it would have flipped the heat or something, but I had that one opportunity at the end, and I was more covering than trying to surf that wave, and just the wind caught my board a little bit. But if I, you know, if I needed a six, maybe I would have surfed it right, who knows.”
As for any advantage gained by having already surfed a heat in what is euphemistically described as “tricky conditions” when he surfs against world number one Griffin Colapinto later today Kelly Slater said,
“I don’t know if the conditions are all that tricky. It’s pretty obvious out there where you got to sit and the good waves seem pretty obvious. That’s the one thing about Margaret’s, when the wind comes sideways and on shore, that south wind in the afternoon, it’s really hard to know which waves are at one. If it’s not like the second or third wave in a set, and it cleans up, you know, if you take the first wave in a set, it gets real tricky and weird. So, I don’t know, these sort of mornings, as the wind starts to die down, there should be some really good surfing. There should be some really obvious waves, and the face here a little steeper and sitting on a reef.”
Can Kelly Slater subvert reality again against the ravenously aggressive young dandy Colapinto?
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Is Slater hungry enough to try twice as hard as he ever had to, day in and day out all year? At 52, with injuries, business ventures, a kid on the way, and a lot of hungry young guys who learned from him for their whole lives and really want a title, that’s what it would take.
Nobody else has ever even wanted to be on tour this long, much less when they’d already won enough titles that they couldn’t help being a little bored with it.
Surfing isn’t like skateboarding, where Alva, Hawk, Mullen, et al can play around, practice something new, hang with everyone and have a good time, and now and then wow everyone with a video part. The WCT is a very demanding slog.
For the last week or so wsl men eyeing the draw wondering which of the crop would be asked to wield the blade to kill the old goat.
Befitting USA torch throw.
Time for Kelly to hang it up. The only guys he can beat are those that are injured.
And yet he was just easily dispatched by Grif. So sad 😔
God Margies is boring. Lovely place, boring wave.
Delightful lil town, yes.
Loved it myself, especially compared to East Coast USA. Gorgeous water, fun lines if the wind isn’t on it.
If there was any gift from growing up on east coast waves, it’s always being appreciative of how good it is elsewhere.
I dunno, really enjoyed yesterday’s surfing and surprisingly got my arse handed to me when I surfed mainbreak.
Hahahahahar – it can be a cunt of a place.
No fond memories of Mainbreak.
There’s some nice places to surf around there. I like lefthanders and even south point was fun. Injidup too. Margaret River is a cunt of a place though.
yeah, but in the highly unlikely scenario where he wins this event and makes the cut, he’s missing the birth to go to Tahiti